


the prisoner's dilemma

by jaekyu



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Angst, Friends With Benefits, Hurt No Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love, Pseudo Hate Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:28:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29380671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaekyu/pseuds/jaekyu
Summary: The problem with Jihoon and Mingyu’s relationship is that the space for the words Mingyu wants to say simply does not exist.Jihoon has hardly ever been very good at sleeping inside a bed he’s made.
Relationships: Kim Mingyu/Lee Jihoon | Woozi, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 38





	the prisoner's dilemma

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes you write 6k of a second chapter of another fic you're working on for a different fandom, and then once you hand it off to your beta to read over you? accidently? write? a whole other fic? for a different fandom? needless to say: i edited this myself because my beta is already reading something over for me!
> 
> basically i have been a) really into woozi/mingyu and b) possessed by the idea of, instead of building an fwb fic up to the love confession, to just start with it. and to dissect how that might play out but like. less in a fun way and more in a depressing, human way. and thusly: now you have this.
> 
> enjoy! it's not a good time!

mistakes on the part of nature, the living proof of what they're calling love,   
uncertain sideways streets, where things that don't match meet  
a mistake on the part of nature, you are a tall glass, a blast from the past, where things were simpler then,  
you ask: exactly when?  
  
— **SWEET TALK, SWEET TALK** by The New Pornographers 

**1.**

“I love you.”

At first, Jihoon assumes he’s heard wrong. Because what Jihoon thinks he hears — what he assumes, immediately, is an understandable miscomprehension, facilitated by Mingyu panting his words into Jihoon’s collarbone, muffled and wet — is that Mingyu just told Jihoon he loved him. 

“What?” Jihoon asks, even though he doesn’t desire any answer. Not really. He’s hoping, maybe, that Mingyu will prove him right. That Mingyu will repeat himself, and it will turn out he didn’t say anything close to what Jihoon thinks he’s heard.

But Mingyu starts, “I lo —”

Jihoon cuts him off. “Never mind,” he says, shaking his head. He doesn’t want to do this right now, with Mingyu’s hips slotted against his and Mingyu’s mouth against the bare skin of his chest. Jihoon might not want to do this ever, he hasn’t decided yet, but he especially doesn’t want to do it right now. “Never mind. Forget I asked. Just — keep going.”

Mingyu lifts his head. Jihoon meets his eyes, and neither of their gazes falter. It feels like this moment tightens around them, a screw burrowed into wood farther than it was ever meant to go. Jihoon doesn’t say anything and neither does Mingyu.

For a moment, Jihoon thinks Mingyu might not continue. That he might roll off of Jihoon, pull away from him, further and further until he is nothing but a faded memory, a splotch on the horizon. 

Instead, he says, “okay,” and leans down to press his mouth against Jihoon’s, a hard kiss. 

Something malevolent and toxic and awful takes root in Jihoon’s chest, like a parasite. Jihoon is powerless against it, just as he is powerless against the way Mingyu’s mouth feels against his. 

Mingyu kisses him harder. He holds Jihoon’s hips like Jihoon might splinter, might explode into fragments just to get away. And maybe Jihoon will, maybe he will be unable to stop that from happening. And the worst part will be the way the sharpest edges of him might tear into Mingyu, break him open and _hurt_. As if there weren't a myriad of other ways, ways that Jihoon already had, as a means to inflict pain on Mingyu.

**2.**

The problem with Jihoon and Mingyu’s relationship is that the space for the words Mingyu wants to say simply does not exist. 

Jihoon has hardly ever been very good at sleeping inside a bed he’s made. 

The truth is, Jihoon and Mingyu’s relationship (and Jihoon doesn’t even like to use that specific word, for the record. It’s too hard-edged, too specific and yet not specific enough. It leaves too much room for interpretation, and yet still puts Jihoon and Mingyu into a box that contains each other) hardly takes up any space at all, as an entity on it’s own. That’s why it’s supposed to work; Jihoon has always solely focused inward, on his own ambitions and dreams. He hardly ever steps outside himself, let alone would ever find himself willing to give up so much of his own time to foster something romantic with anyone else. They’ll be time for that when he’s actually accomplished things in his life.

Again, this is why he and Mingyu are supposed to work. Because it’s not supposed to be amorous. It’s supposed to be more carnal than that, more a response to the most basic desires. More transactionary, in the metaphorical sense, and definitely as far away from romantic that regularly sleeping with the same person can possibly get.

Jihoon realizes that that’s sort of an oxymoron. Believe him. He gets it.

**3.**

It’s been four days since Jihoon has spoken to Mingyu. It’s a Friday, and he goes out to lunch with Seungcheol, and they order meat and beer and they take a long time to eat, talking at length between each and every bite. 

Objectively: four days is not a very long time to go without speaking to someone. Four days isn’t even an uncommon amount of time for Jihoon and Mingyu to go without speaking. Or, rather, it was not uncommon for the Jihoon and Mingyu of six months ago, who had just embarked on this fool’s errand, a slave to their most basic wants. Mingyu was tall and broad and sharp-jawed and before Jihoon could really find his footing, he was sliding down a slope that just got more and more slippery until —

 _I love you_ , a disembodied voice rattles in Jihoon’s skull. It almost sounds like Mingyu — _almost_ — but Jihoon refuses to associate those words with the shape of Mingyu’s mouth, and the specific look in his eyes. Even in his imagination. If Jihoon wanted to do that, he would have let Mingyu repeat himself the other night.

“Mingyu told me he loved me.” Jihoon says it to Seungcheol without really meaning to. He hadn’t meant to tell anyone; Jihoon’s friends are Mingyu’s friends and, though the fact the that the two of them sleep together isn’t a secret, Jihoon had thought he’d at least give Mingyu the courtesy of sparing him the embarrassment of their friends knowing . . . all of that. 

Maybe Jihoon is looking for an impartial (or as impartial of a person as he can find, as impartial someone can be when Jihoon has rapport enough with them that they can know about his sex life) look on this situation. Maybe he’s hoping Seungcheol will tell Jihoon he’s overreacting, and he must have really not heard correctly, and all of this was just a misunderstanding, not even worth the headache. 

Instead, Seungcheol says, “and what did you say?”

No such luck, it seems. 

“I didn’t really say anything,” Jihoon replies. He goes to take another swig of his beer and finds it empty, nothing but a leftover drop of moisture on the lip of it left over to wet Jihoon’s tongue. “I thought I had heard him wrong — we were, y’know,” Seungcheol makes a face. “So I asked him to repeat himself, and when I realized I hadn’t heard him wrong, and he was going to say it again, I just — I sort of told him not to.”

Seungcheol hums, like he’s really considering what Jihoon is telling him. Like there was ever going to be an appropriate response from him that wasn’t: “I think that makes you an asshole, Jihoon.”

“Yeah,” Jihoon replies lamely. “I think it does.”

“This is why you don’t fuck your friends.”

**4.**

Okay, so the problem with the rule of Don’t Fuck Your Friends, is that the first time Jihoon and Mingyu slept with each other, they weren’t friends.

They were mutual friends of mutual friends, technically. Jihoon knew Soonyoung who knew Wonwoo who knew Mingyu. That was the thread that connected them. It had felt simple, as a result, the first time it happened. They were so far removed from one another. It was like sleeping with a stranger but, like, better, because at least knew your friends liked this person, and they were probably not going to murder you, or something. 

So, when Jihoon sees Mingyu at a party (Thrown by another mutual friend of mutual friends, Seungcheol’s friend Jeonghan’s friend Joshua. This is how Jihoon meets most people he knows, for the record. His social circle is like the pattern of a spiderweb, all those spread out, connecting threads.) and Jihoon thinks that Mingyu is good looking, it’s an easy decision. They make out in the kitchen for a good fifteen minutes, Jihoon sitting on the counter top with Mingyu’s arms posed on either side of him, and Jihoon’s own arms tugging at the collar of Mingyu’s shirt from the back. It does not seem complicated at all for Jihoon to let Mingyu take him home, not when he kisses so good as has big hands like that. 

And, a few weeks and a few more easy — simple, uncomplicated — slips into each other’s bed later, when Mingyu asks Jihoon, “what are you looking for here? Like, with the two of us?”

And Jihoon responds with, “I’m not really looking for anything, honestly.”

After all of that, Jihoon thinks, _at least he knows that now_. And then when Mingyu invites Jihoon over, again and again, Jihoon thinks, _good, he’s okay with that, we’re both on the same page_.

After all of that, Jihoon convinces himself it can stay uncomplicated. It can stay simple, and easy, and he doesn’t have to worry about it. 

It, unfortunately, turns out that Jihoon should have been worrying about it. He should have been worried about it the whole time.

**5.**

“Should I sleep with someone else?” Jihoon asks Soonyoung.

“No. _No._ Do not do that. Do not sleep with someone else, Jihoon. That would make it worse. That would make you even more of an asshole.”

Soonyoung is right. Jihoon doesn’t really want to sleep with anyone else, anyway. 

So, another layer to this whole fucked up situation is this: the problem is not that Jihoon can’t imagine a version of this story where he loves Mingyu. That might be the worst part, actually. The part Jihoon won’t tell anyone about, because it adds something specifically abhorrent, Jihoon thinks, to his behaviour in this situation. Jihoon might be able to love Mingyu back, if he were to let himself. But he can’t let himself. He can’t do it. He _doesn’t_ want to do it. It’s one of those head in the heart situations, and Jihoon has always used his head, turning it up too loud, to drown out all the complicated things that come with the heart. 

“What am I supposed to do?”

“You talk to him, Jihoon,” Soonyoung replies. “That’s how you figure this out. You talk about it.”

Jihoon doesn’t miss the specific words that Soonyoung uses. He doesn’t say _how you fix this_ , he says _how you figure this out_. 

That’s the worst part, that’s the extra fucked up layer Jihoon hasn’t told anyone about: he hates to break Mingyu’s heart like this, because there’s a version of this story, not very far from the version of this story Jihoon is living, where Jihoon doesn’t. 

**6.**

It’s been a little over a week since they’ve last seen each other when Mingyu shows up on Jihoon’s doorstep. 

“Hey,” Jihoon greets him when he opens the door. They remain standing on either side of the threshold. It’s a clear, explicit divide between them, and the most obvious metaphor to be made. Jihoon hopes to god there’s a normal conversation for them in here somewhere.

“Hey,” Mingyu parrots Jihoon’s greeting back to him. “You’re kind of fucked up, do you know that? Especially to me. You’re fucked up to me, Jihoon.”

And what is Jihoon supposed to do? Deny a truth that’s already been laid out for him, something he knows bone-deep? “Yeah,” Jihoon admits and then, because he’s fucked up, and he’s fucked up specifically to Mingyu, he asks, “do you wanna fuck me?”

And because Mingyu is in love with Jihoon, apparently, he says, “yeah, I wanna fuck you,” and crosses the threshold into Jihoon’s apartment.

**7.**

Mingyu’s fingers curl into the waistband of Jihoon’s sweatpants. He pauses there, for a moment, so he can lean forward and kiss Jihoon, sinking his teeth into Jihoon’s bottom lip. His fingers drag against Jihoon’s belly, sharp-knuckled and warm.

This is familiar; the way Mingyu fits his mouth against Jihoon’s mouth, the way Mingyu presses his body against Jihoon’s body. But there’s an edge to it tonight, and something inside Jihoon feels balanced precariously, on the cusp of danger, like when you drag your thumb across a knife and hope it’s not sharp enough to cut you. 

But Jihoon won’t stop it. He wants it. He’ll press his thumb against the blade, harder and harder. Because Mingyu is using love as a form of self-harm, and so Jihoon will use guilt in the same way. 

_It was never supposed to go like this_ , Jihoon thinks to say, maybe, but he doesn’t think that’s anything Mingyu wants to hear. He doesn’t even necessarily think he’ll find any salvation in speaking out loud. 

They don’t make it into Jihoon’s bedroom. Mingyu walks Jihoon backwards, hands still fisted into the front of Jihoon’s pants, until the back of Jihoon’s knees hit his couch, and Jihoon is allowing himself to be laid back against it. 

He wants Mingyu’s mouth on his again, but Mingyu is preoccupied elsewhere — finally, _finally_ pulling Jihoon’s pants down his legs — and Jihoon doesn’t think he’s in any position to ask for anything. 

Jihoon is sure this isn’t what Soonyoung meant when he told Jihoon the only way to save anything, to keep Jihoon’s own faith in his ability to be a good person above water, was to talk to Mingyu. But talking leaves so much room for error; isn’t it easier to do it this way? You can’t misunderstand the purposeful press of a hand against your stomach, or the bite of teeth into the fleshiest part of your thigh.

Mingyu is unceremonious while he opens Jihoon up for him. They aren’t really kissing anymore, and Mingyu isn’t talking. Neither of them are talking, honestly. Jihoon doesn’t take it personally. He understands that he is a means to an end. He understands Mingyu is here to get something out of his system. Neither of them are unwilling, they only understand completely what they are here to accomplish. There is something clinical about this; the not-quite-wet-enough slide of Mingyu’s fingers inside of Jihoon, both of Jihoon’s legs around Mingyu’s hips. It feels like Mingyu is checking tasks off of a to-do list. 

“Will you kiss me?” Jihoon asks, desperate to disrupt Mingyu’s methodical taking apart of Jihoon enough to ground him in this moment. 

Mingyu looks at Jihoon. Whether on purpose or by accident, Mingyu presses closer to Jihoon, spreading his legs further. Jihoon’s muscles burn. 

Mingyu doesn’t answer with words. Instead, he covers Jihoon’s entire body with his. They are both only naked from the waist down, but Jihoon’s shirt is bunched up under his armpits, so he feels the exact ways the cotton of Mingyu’s shirt catches against his damp skin. Jihoon presses up into Mingyu regardless — presses and presses, like a thumb against a knife until he bleeds. Until he presses so hard he’s afraid he might slip inside of Mingyu and never find a way out, presses hard until Mingyu decides to finally kiss him. 

They are still like this — pressed awkwardly together on Jihoon’s couch that is decidedly, in no way, big enough to get fucked on — when Mingyu fucks into Jihoon properly, with his hand around the base of his cock to guide himself. 

It’s not a good angle, not by any means. Jihoon whines anyway, barring down to try to fit more of Mingyu into him, as fast as he can manage it. Mingyu does not indulge him. He stays the course, eyes focused on a spot on Jihoon’s chest. He’s seeing through Jihoon, really, through his body and his couch and his apartment floor. And further and further, maybe, until Mingyu is seeing things no one ever should. 

They are quiet while they fuck. It is mostly just an exchange of hot breath into each other’s mouths, hands slipping against sweat-slicked skin. Mingyu thrusts, harsh and systematic, into Jihoon, driving him further and further up the length of his couch. Jihoon tries to watch Mingyu’s face, but eventually it’s too much and he ends up staring at the ceiling. 

There are two different scenarios that Jihoon imagines here.

First: this is the scenario where Mingyu never loves him. Or maybe Mingyu loves him, but he never tells him. He never confesses it into the whetted-edge of Jihoon’s collarbone. He never breaks that part of himself open. Maybe he buries it deep enough, or maybe it never exists in the first place. It doesn’t matter. All of this — this volcano at eruption, the flood that’s already half-consumed everything in its path — never happens. Things remain simple. Things remain uncomplicated.

The second scenario is the one where Jihoon allows himself, or learns to, or better understands his capacity, to love Mingyu back. This scenario might be happier. Jihoon doesn’t yearn for it as much as he thinks he should. He doesn’t yearn for it the same way he would yearn for it if this was more about romanticism, about the path he would take dictated by emotion. But still: a part of his heart calls out for it, wonders what it might have been like. But all the pictures Jihoon tries to paint in his mind are half-finished, frayed at the edges or not coloured in all the way. The part of Mingyu that Jihoon would come to learn if he loved him back is one he does not currently have access to. And, by consequence, those corners of Jihoon’s imagined scenario remain as vague as they must. Because Jihoon lacks the information to know what fits inside of them, and what doesn’t.

When Mingyu comes, it’s across Jihoon’s stomach. When Jihoon comes, it is more like an afterthought.

**8.**

Mingyu is already putting his clothes back on. Mingyu is already leaving.

“I’m sorry I ruined everything,” Jihoon tells him, because it is as close to the truth as Jihoon can get without feeling bound to his own emotions. Feelings are sticky that way — once you wade too far into them, there is no turning back. Like quicksand. 

Mingyu sighs. The straight line of his shoulders collapses, just a little, as if the weight they carry is finally starting to bend him. “You didn’t ruin anything. It was me. I ruined it.”

“Not on purpose.”

The moment lapses into silence. It fills until it bursts. 

“Do you hate me?” Jihoon asks, morbidly curious.

Mingyu has his back turned to Jihoon. But he looks over his shoulder, catching Jihoon’s gaze out of the corner of his eye. “It would be easier,” he answers. “It would be easier if I did.” 

_I don’t hate you because I love you_ , goes unsaid. The presence of the words hang in the room, regardless, like a noose. 

“That’s the problem, isn’t it? That you don’t hate me.”

“Yes, Jihoon,” Mingyu sighs again. “That’s exactly the problem.”

And then Mingyu is gone.

**9.**

It’s a week later when Jihoon walks in on Mingyu getting head at a party.

It is another week that has passed where they haven’t been speaking. It’s another friend of a friend of a friend who organized this get together. It’s another night of sour beer, and stale chips, and slipping from person to person, unable to tether yourself to a specific conversation, the spectre at a party you don’t feel entirely assimilated in. 

At first, Jihoon thinks Mingyu didn’t come. He had assumed, of course, that Mingyu had been invited. Friends of friends of friends, and all that. Jihoon had mulled over coming at all tonight because of it, and had asked Seungcheol, over and over, if it was really worth it. 

(Seungcheol doesn’t know that Mingyu and Jihoon fucked that time, on the couch in Jihoon’s apartment. There had been a pit in Jihoon’s stomach after Mingyu had left. His back was sore, and his knees, and he was so tired. 

Jihoon decided that the whole night, and everything that passed between him and Mingyu during the length of, was better off folded up into the smallest little ball, and shoved down as Jihoon could manage.)

At first, Jihoon thinks all the consideration of pros and cons wasn’t even worth it. Because Mingyu isn’t here.

Then, of course, someone misdirects Jihoon through the wrong door — he had asked for the bathroom, and the person Jihoon asked sort of waved, non-committal, in a vague direction, and Jihoon had just decided to pick a door and test his luck. 

Jihoon realizes, very quickly, that this door was not the one he was meant to go through. 

He’s in someone’s bedroom. Or, he’s standing at the doorway of someone’s bedroom. Light spills into the deep blue darkness, painting splashes of yellow across parts of the room. Enough light comes to just bring a single face in the room into focus, and that’s all Jihoon needs.

Mingyu stares back at Jihoon. They are always finding each other one opposite sides of the same doorway, it seems. There is someone on their knees at Mingyu’s feet, folded against Mingyu’s body in faux-worship. There is something thick and wet in Jihoon’s throat; maybe it’s all the emotions he folded up and pushed away, rising up inside of him like bile. Mingyu looks at him. Jihoon looks back. The person at Mingyu’s feet, Mingyu’s fingers threaded in their hair, has seemingly noticed none of this.

In this person’s defence, the whole moment only lasts a few seconds. Jihoon opens the door, and he looks at Mingyu, and Mingyu looks at him, and Jihoon is closing the door, and maybe, _maybe_ , something close to a minute has passed. But it feels like longer than that. For Jihoon, the moment stretches and pulls like taffy, thinning out across his brain until it’s slipping into every crack, consuming his every thought. 

Jihoon finds Seungcheol perched on the arm of a couch, nursing a bottle of beer that must have long ago gone warm, and talking to someone Jihoon half-recognizes (friends of friends of friends, this one’s name is Joshua, right? Or maybe Jeonghan). 

He grips Seungcheol by his elbow. “I’m going home,” he tells him.

Seungcheol furrows his brow. “Why? Is Mingyu here?”

But Jihoon doesn’t answer. He’s already leaving. And he refuses to verbalize any of the reasons he might be doing it. Like he’s afraid if he lays words out into the universe, they’ll be like concrete blocks, and they’ll drag him to the bottom of a lake.

**10.**

Alright, so: Jihoon is under no illusions about what this is. He knows he’s acting just like a child would. It’s children who are the ones who want the toys they weren’t playing with as soon as someone else tries to take them. 

See, this is why Jihoon doesn’t like to deal in feelings. Feelings are messy, and they make you do stupid things. Like show up at the door of someone who once told you they loved you, a few days after you walked in on someone else sucking their dick. 

“What are you doing here?” Mingyu doesn’t even say hello. Jihoon can’t help but notice the steady upwards trajectory of each of their most recent interactions. Hostility and hurt simmering below the surface, about to reach its boiling point.

“Did you do that on purpose?” Jihoon asks. He has never understood asking questions to get the answers he wants. Curiosity runs too deep inside of Jihoon to account for that. He rules over himself less with the carrot, and more with the stick. “At the party, the other night — did you want to hurt me?”

Mingyu lips purse. “My life doesn’t revolve around you, Jihoon.”

“You love me,” Jihoon says it without thinking. “So part of it does. Some part of you thinks about me all the time.”

Mingyu’s expression shifts from one of angered annoyance, to something closer to outright hurt. 

“Would that be easier for you to understand — if I said I did it get a reaction out of you?”

“I don’t know.” Jihoon is being truthful. He’s not even quite sure why he asked. Only that the question burned in his skull like a bullet wound, and Jihoon would have done anything to temper the bleeding.

Regardless, Mingyu doesn’t answer Jihoon’s question. Instead, he says, “this is the first time you’ve acknowledged it, y’know? That I told you I loved you that night.”

At least in any significant way. At least in a way that wasn’t purposefully vague, or built entirely on codewords and innuendo. In a way that could not be misinterpreted.

That’s the root of it here, isn’t it? Misinterpretation.

“Did you mean it?”

“Why does it matter?”

_Because I keep thinking about all the ways, the ways I could convince myself, that I could get to the point where I love you too. I’m sorry I don’t know how to cross that bridge, now that we’ve both come to it._

“I’m sorry I ruined it.” It’s the same thing Jihoon had said to Mingyu what feels like a lifetime ago, only now it’s Mingyu who says it. It’s the same words that tried to put a band-aid over a gash that needed something more like stitches.

“You didn’t ruin anything,” Jihoon replies. “It was me. I ruined it.”

 _Yeah_ , Jihoon admits to himself only, in the protection of his own skull. _That’s probably true._

Mingyu doesn’t say anything. Jihoon curls his fist into the front of Mingyu’s shirt, pulling him onto the same of the threshold as Jihoon. He kisses him. Mingyu lets Jihoon kiss him, and kisses him back, eventually. He wraps his hand around Jihoon’s upper arm, digging his nails in. Jihoon lets him. He kisses him harder, and harder, and harder.

Love as a form of self-harm.

**Author's Note:**

> 'The Prisoner's Dilemma' is a, and I quote, "paradox in decision analysis in which two individuals acting in their own self-interests do not produce the optimal outcome. The typical prisoner's dilemma is set up in such a way that both parties choose to protect themselves at the expense of the other participant."
> 
> [fic twitter](https://twitter.com/bIoodbuzzed), [personal twitter](https://twitter.com/sieepwellbeast), [cc](https://curiouscat.qa/bloodbuzzed)


End file.
